


The Little Things You Notice (I’ve Loved You All This While)

by lesyeuxverts



Series: I've Loved You All This While [1]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: AU, First Kiss, Lewis FrightFest 2014, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 08:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2541335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl found dead in Port Meadow; a case that’s upsetting James more than usual; a hundred things that Robbie should have noticed (Laura and Innocent know alllll about it); some faerie tales are true; all’s well that ends well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Things You Notice (I’ve Loved You All This While)

  
Robbie isn’t sure when he first suspected. He’s meant to be a decent detective - good at noticing things, like, as Val always said ... usually when he’d forgot to take the bins out.  
  
Thing is, though, it was never one thing, but more like a hundred half-heard hints all at the same time. None of them big enough on its own to mean much.  
  
Still, that doesn’t excuse him from not noticing. The first time he met James, Robbie should’ve known there was something about him - the stiff way he held himself back, maybe, the pained look when he saw Robbie’s bright shirt, or the way he stared at the orchids, mesmerized. (More sensitive to _everything_ , Robbie knows now, with all the blessings and curses that it brings.)  
  
Nothing can excuse his blindness - not when it’s ended up like this, James on the floor gasping for breath and Robbie not sure how to touch him without hurting him. He should have _known_ \- should have worked it out earlier.  
  


*****

  
  
Innocent gives Robbie a look he can’t interpret, and then slides the look straight on over to James. She hesitates before passing the case folder over, and looks almost as though she wants to ask them if they’re okay with taking the case.  
  
“It’ll be fine, ma’am,” Robbie says, James silent at his side.  
  
(He’ll remember that later, remember and curse himself for not noticing.)  
  
She hesitates still, but pushes the folder across her desk at them. Her lacquered nails tap once against the wood and then she holds herself still, looking at them both.  
  
“I don’t think I have to tell you how seriously we are going to take this case,” she says. “Any attack on a minority group in Oxford--”  
  
“We’ll catch them before the news groups can get on your back, ma’am,” Robbie promises. He scoops up the folder and then turns to James. “Right?”  
  
“Of course, sir.” James is his usual self, poker face and stiff posture, but there’s something intense about his eyes as he looks at Robbie and then at Innocent. “Of course we will.”  
  
They sit in the pub after having called it quits for the day, stalled in their inquiries while they wait for the forensic reports. Robbie is nursing a single pint of bitter while James downs glass after glass of tonic water -- he’s not driving, neither of them are, by prior arrangement, but he refused an ale when Robbie offered. He is as effervescent and sparkling as his drinks.  
  
(There is something brittle and stiff about his posture, the way he holds himself, the way that he won’t quite meet Robbie’s gaze.)  
  
“Of course it requires specialized knowledge,” he says, brushing aside all of Robbie’s theories as if they are mere cobwebs. “The sort of specialized knowledge that anyone can learn at their mother’s knee -- any faerie-tale will tell you how to kill a faerie, sir.”  
  
If Robbie hadn’t been watching him this whole time, he’d have sworn that James was drunk -- the earnest, owlish, too-careful way that he looks at Robbie, the sober enunciation of each sentence. Robbie reaches out to steady him when his hand wobbles, tonic water splashing onto his hand and the sturdy, much-abused, pub table.  
  
“Right,” he says. “Time to get you home, I reckon.” He doesn’t know if James has been, without his knowledge, asking for vodka in his tonic water, or if someone’s slipped something in, but he’s never seen the man in such a state. Robbie calls a cab to take them home, and holds James’s arm the entire way.  
  
“Warm,” James says, looking down at Robbie’s hand as though he’s surprised by it.  
  
“Aye.” There’s not much else to say, not with James in this state -- not that he’ll remember any of it, if Robbie’s any judge.  
  
“Everybody knows … everybody knows…” James blinks up at him, his eyes huge in the half-light of passing streetlamps and a shadowed moon.  
  
“What does everybody know?” Robbie prompts him, jogging his elbow to keep him from falling asleep.  
  
“How to kill a faerie,” James says. He blinks as though it’s been rather stupid of Robbie not to have realized this earlier. “Everybody knows how to kill a faerie. Loads of people want to.”  
  
So that’s what’s bothering the lad. “Not loads of people,” Robbie says gently, helping him unfold his lanky body and fit it through the door frame. He pulls James out of the cab, catching him when he stumbles on his feet. “Don’t let it trouble you too much, soft-hearted lad. The rest of the fey’re sure to be safe tonight.”  
  
“Full moon,” James says, turning his face up to look at it. He’s slumped against Robbie now, and the warmth of his body and the way he trusts his weight to Robbie are enough to make his insides start squirming.  
  
No. He shouldn’t be taking advantage. Not like this -- if he wants this at all, which Robbie has just begun to admit to himself that he might do -- he doesn’t want it like this, with James drunk or incapacitated and not thinking straight.  
  
“That’s right,” he says. He starts to guide James up the path to his door. “Full moon - faerie strength at its max, hey presto and all of that. I’m sure all your friends in the band are safe tonight.”  
  
James jerks in his arms and Robbie almost stumbles. “My friends in the band? Wh-what?”  
  
“Obvious, innit?”  
  
Robbie somehow manages to navigate the sticky situation of supporting James and fumbling his key into the lock at the same time.  
  
“You - they aren’t --”  
  
“Aren’t they?” Robbie asks. He fumbles the door open and manages to drag James through into the foyer, shutting the door behind them with a slam loud enough to make James wince. (No sense in the neighbours hearing this, after all.)  
  
“They’re uniformly fey, the lot of them,” Robbie says, his voice catching in his throat as James leans against him again. “At least that’s what I reckon. Pale -- musically gifted -- only seen by moonlight, or at least that’s when I’ve seen them -- fine tall slender things - only outlier’s that they practice in a church, but maybe you get the holy water locked up before practice starts, yeah?”  
  
(Later, James will explain about the holy water, and Robbie will laugh at himself -- it will be easy to laugh about this, later.)  
  
It’s hard to voice his suspicions with the weight of James pressed against his shoulder, harder still to form coherent sentences with the way that James is gripping his arm.  
  
“Don’t worry about it, lad,” Robbie says, prying James’s fingers loose. (He holds James’s hand for a minute too long.) “I’ve suspected for a long time now and not said anything, right? Your friends’ secrets are safe with me. I’m not the prejudiced sort.”  
  
James blinks at him, and again, Robbie is reminded of an owl, clever and serious. “Not like them,” James says. “You’re not like them.”  
  
By _them_ , Robbie thinks that he must mean the louts who caught a faerie, tried to torture the secrets of her fey blood out of her, and left her impaled on cold iron in the middle of Port Meadow. So close to the natural world that gave her her supernatural strength -- and still so far from being able to reach it -- must be a special kind of hell, that.  
  
Blimey, no wonder James is so upset, thinking of his friends and that unknown girl’s fate.  
  
(Later, Robbie will remember this thought and laugh at himself for his mistake, his stupidity, his blindness.)  
  
“Time for some water, I think,” he says. He manages to get the better part of a pint of water into James before giving it up as a lost cause -- far more than a pint of water having sloshed out onto the kitchen floor due to James’s broad and fervent hand motions -- and dragging him into his bedroom.  
  
“I don’t know what you drank, lad,” he says, looking down at the sprawl of James in his rumpled clothes over his duvet, “but don’t make a habit of it, aye? I don’t fancy nursemaiding you through a drunken stupor like this on a daily basis.”  
  
James reaches out and catches his wrist as he turns to go. “Stay?”  
  
Robbie curses his treacherous heart, which skips a beat and wishes the invitation had been one he could in conscience accept. “All right,” he says, perching on the side of the bed. No different from sitting with Lyn or Mark when they’d had a nightmare, after all.  
  
He tangles his hand through James’s hair and strokes it softly until the lad falls asleep. Rising quietly, he lets himself out of the flat and locks the door with his spare key. “Goodnight,” he says to the empty street in front of him, leaning back against the solid wood. His body still feels warm where James leaned against him for similar support.  
  


*****

  
  
The next morning is as stilted and as uncomfortable as Robbie could’ve expected, with James hovering around him, pale and stiff-looking in his dark suit, looking as though he’d like to apologise. Robbie doesn’t give him a chance, but sends him out for coffee and then to interview some of the witnesses -- dog-walkers and picnickers and people who take their morning constitutionals in Port Meadow. Witnesses, but all of them on the scene far too late to save the girl.  
  
Robbie pops in to visit Laura, instead, and is surprised when she shakes her head before he can even open his mouth. “I don’t know anything more than I did when James dropped by,” she tells him.  
  
“He was here?” Robbie asks. He must’ve been, going on what she’s just said, but he’d thought--  
  
“Looking a bit the worse for wear, yes, but he was here as the sun rises, bright and ready for the job. Shall I have a word with Herself about your lack of pastoral care, Robbie? It’s not like you to let him burn the candle at both ends like this.”  
  
Robbie slouches, one hip against the nearest counter, his hands finding their way into his pockets (as if he’s the one that’s got something to hide, a guilty secret to keep from Laura -- well, he does, he’ll admit that, but this isn’t it.)  
  
“Dunno what’s wrong with the lad,” he says. “Right worried about him, in fact. We went to the Trout last night and I had a pint, and he had about six glasses of tonic water. Acted like he was drunker than a lord, after that. I dragged him home and put him to bed.”  
  
Laura looks at him as though she doesn’t quite know what to do with him and then smiles. “Big night out, then? I suppose everyone’s entitled, now and again.”  
  
“But Laura -- I don’t know for certain, I suppose … I didn’t see him order, after the first one, but I’m pretty sure that tonic water’s all he had. You know our James, he’s not one for spirits.”  
  
Laura snorts. (Later, Robbie will realize why she found him funny.)  
  
“No, he’s not one for spirits at all,” she says, turning away from him and towards her bench. “Now, the sooner you get out of here, the sooner I can get some answers for you.”  
  
Anastasia Europa Parkington-Lee was the girl’s name, Robbie finds when he gets back to his desk -- some quick-witted constable had connected the missing persons report to his current case. A name is a starting place, at least, he tells James as he collects him and drags him to the girl’s home.  
  
It is one of those stately Oxford homes that makes Robbie lower his head and mutter about the upper classes -- normally he’d go on about it, but with James in this state -- he risks a quick sideways look and sees him still drawn and pale. No railing against the aristocracy, then.  
  
(Robbie would give quite a lot, right now, to hear James mouth off with some smart-aleck comment, a quote from the Bard, another poet, anything.)  
  
The woman who answers the door is fey, that’s for certain -- statuesque, the sort of beauty that has made artists mad for centuries. She’s also the girl’s mother, if Robbie’s any judge -- same cheekbones. Not letting the hired help answer the door then, for whatever that’s worth.  
  
“Anastasia Europa?” she asks, and it hurts to see the hopeful look in her eyes.  
  
Robbie’s still clearing his throat when James steps past him, brushing his shoulder lightly. “I’m so sorry, ma’am.” He reaches out and takes the woman’s hand, a clasp more than a handshake, and Robbie tries not to feel jealousy at the sight of it, James standing there holding a stranger’s hand.  
  
“Is -- was it --”  
  
She speaks in broken sentences, and James speaks over them, calm and soothing. More than anything, she looks like a bird with a broken wing, some wild creature caught and suffering, a shadow of herself. Robbie’s always hated this part of the job, telling the family, but it’s a thousand times worse when they’re fae. They feel it so.  
  
A few deep breaths, though, and she’s releasing James’s hand and drawing herself up to her full height. She looks proud and the epitome of every faerie legend, but somehow there’s something -- a strain in her eyes, the tightness of her mouth? -- that makes her look almost human. “Forgive my discourtesy, please. Enter and be welcome, gentlemen.”  
  
She leads them through the foyer to the room where her husband sits, waiting. It’s obvious from his bearing that he already knows -- for his part, he looks like a dragonfly with crushed wings, hunched in on himself and beyond hope of escape.  
  
They go through the motions, Mr. and Mrs. Parkington-Lee, offering them both tiny crystal glasses of milk. James accepts his gravely, raising it in salute to his hosts and then touching the rim with his lips, and then draining the glass with one long swallow -- each motion is distinct and precise and graceful. (He’s perfect.) Robbie copies him, feeling awkward about it.  
  
He lets James lead the interview, too, feeling fumble-footed and off-balance in this airy, celestial parlour. He’d never be like the oafs who took the faerie girl and killed her, but he’s wondered often if they are meant to mingle like this, the ethereal with the merely mortal. What, in the end, do fairies gain out of taking mortal names and living amongst them?  
  
James seems easier with them, but then, he’s fresh from the various equality and diversity training modules, the etiquette classes and all that rigmarole. (Later, Robbie will look back and laugh at this thought, too. He should have _known_.)  
  
He tunes back into the conversation in time to get a picture of Anastasia as a bright young thing, destined for Magdalen College in the fall, wanting to read Human Classics. “Of course she had a full education in Faerie Literature, too, you understand,” Mrs. Parkington-Lee says, looking at James as if she expected him to blame her for her daughter’s choice. “She -- she was just _fascinated_ , though, by some of the stories that humans wrote. The Illiad. That’s what she was reading this week.”  
  
“I read Human Theology, myself,” James says. “A solid education is the grounding for a well-informed life -- whatever the education is in.”  
  
The Parkington-Lees look at James at that, both of them a bit shocked, still a little pale. Their perfect forced composure seems to falter a little, as if they don’t know what to say.  
  
James takes up the thread of the conversation, gets the names of Anastasia’s friends and schoolmates. Before they rise to go, he has soothed them again, somehow sealed over the chasm of shock and grief.  
  
Robbie’s never seen him do anything like this before, never seen him be so open with anyone they’ve interviewed, never seen him speak with this soft and bewitching voice. (Maybe it’s the hangover. What _did_ he drink last night?)  
  
Before they take their leave, James clasps each of his hosts by the forearm, and bends close to murmur something, so low that Robbie cannot hear it. He follows his sergeant out in a daze, still feeling earthen and lumpish.  
  
The sunlight revives him, and he finds -- as mortals always do -- that he’s lost all sense of time in the faerie dwelling. His watch has stopped working, but the clock in the car tells him that three hours have passed.  
  
“Three hours?” He’s about to start complaining, but James hops into the passenger seat, looking pale and drawn -- worse than he was looking, even, this morning. He takes a deep breath and lets it go.  
  
He turns the key in the ignition. He sneaks another look at James. “Are you--”  
  
James’s head is tilted back against the seat, his hand is covering his eyes. “Fine,” he says. “I’m fine.”  
  


*****

  
  
There’s a coven that meet out near Blackbird Leys, a bunch of school-children who like to dress in black and practise magic. Magick with a k, Robbie is told by one of the witches, a serious spectacled girl. He doesn’t smile, though he senses -- somehow -- that James is amused.  
  
“And what do you know about what happened yesterday?”  
  
“A great many things happened yesterday,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Most of them are beneath our notice.”  
  
Robbie holds his temper, barely, but gives her a stern look. “A girl died yesterday out in Port Meadow, can you tell me anything about that? Or would answering questions down at the station be _beneath your notice_?”  
  
There’s no dismissing her airs and graces, but by the end of the interview, even Robbie has to admit that they’re no closer than they were before. Little Miss Witch had a great deal to say when it came to forebodings and portents, but not any concrete information.  
  
“Leylines, my arse,” Robbie grumbles as they drive away.  
  
“It was a long shot anyway, sir.” James drives, his hands steady on the wheel, looking straight ahead. They still haven’t discussed the night before, and James hardly seems receptive, but--  
  
“James, look--”  
  
His hands tighten on the wheel. “Sir,” he says.  
  
The tone of his voice is enough to make Robbie drop it. “All right,” he says, feeling helpless and hating it. “Where to next?”  
  
(Lord knows that James seems to know what’s going on better than he does. Robbie could do worse than to let him take the lead on this, he reckons.)  
  
James drives purposefully from one weapons-dealer to the next -- he has an uncanny knack, somehow, of knowing which ones sell cold iron. Robbie lets him drive, lets him ask the questions, and all the while, watches the set, strained lines in his face.  
  
“All right,” he says, when the sun’s touching the horizon and James looks stretched tight enough to shatter. “That’s enough for today, I think.”  
  
“Sir--”  
  
“No arguments,” Robbie says. “I’ll take the keys away, if I have to. You’re not fit to work when you’re this tired.”  
  
James has lost his clear, posh accent and is slurring his words a little, just enough to be endearing. There’s something unfamiliar about his accent, something Robbie can’t quite place, and--  
  
Their hands brush together when he reaches to take the keys. A shiver runs up Robbie’s spine, and he shudders.  
  
“Something wrong, sir?”  
  
James has noticed -- of course he has.  
  
“Nothing,” Robbie says easily. “Goose walked over my grave, I guess.”  
  
He drives James back to his flat and stops himself short before he can offer to tuck him in. Too soon to joke about that, he reckons. He hopes that James doesn’t remember that about last night. (He can’t forget it, himself -- the feel of James’s hair under his fingers, the soft sleepy way he blinked up at Robbie, the way he’d asked Robbie to stay--)  
  
The next morning, Robbie has a lecture from Laura and from Innocent both about his responsibilities towards James and how he shouldn’t let the lad work himself to death.  
  
“I took him home at a decent hour,” he protests. “What am I supposed to do, tuck him into bed and sit on him until he goes to sleep?”  
  
Laura had just laughed at this defense, but Innocent looks thoughtful and then smiles. “Whatever it takes,” she tells him. “I expect to see our boy wonder functioning at full capacity.”  
  
James is already at his desk by the time Robbie makes it to their office, Laura’s report spread out before him. He looks up while Robbie’s standing in the doorway. (There’s something about the look in his eyes that makes Robbie want to go to him, clap him on the shoulder, comfort him somehow…)  
  
“She suffered terribly before she died,” is all he says. He pushes the report across his desk and onto Lewis’s. “I’m going--”  
  
He hesitates, then looks at his shoes. “--for a coffee, sir. Do you want one?”  
  
Robbie shakes his head and sends James off.  
  
The report makes for grim reading, Robbie conscious all the time of the empty desk next to his.  
  
(He’ll learn later that James went, not for coffee, but to the morgue, where he watched in silent vigil until Anastasia’s parents came.)  
  
“Imagine,” Innocent says, ducking into his office and startling Robbie into dropping the report. “Imagine that you belonged to an endangered species, immortal when it comes to time and age and disease, but frighteningly mortal when it comes to injury at the hands of your brutish human cousins. Imagine that you cherish your children because they are so precious, so rare, so very difficult to conceive and to bear to full term.  
  
“Imagine that you _lose_ one of your children in the most brutal and horrific of ways, and then are told that the detectives in charge of investigating the case have no leads whatsoever. Hmmm?”  
  
Her eyebrows raised, Innocent gives him a moment to stutter and stammer.  
  
“All due diligence, I know,” she says, her hand on the door handle. “And I know that you and James are doing your best, and I _know_ that James is working himself to death, regardless of what time you dismiss him. But I also know that we have two grieving Faeries who have lost their only daughter, and a press corps that’s about to descend on us, and something that could well spark off a chain of events that we don’t even like to think about.”  
  
She hesitates again before leaving. “Just do your best, Robbie, all right?”  
  
James enters hard on her heels, and Robbie doesn’t even bother asking him how much he’s overheard. (He’s learned when not to ask questions like that, when it comes to James, who has no sense of shame when it comes to eavesdropping.)  
  
“Right,” he says. “Where are we, then?”  
  
James frowns down at his feet. “Back to Cowley Road, I think, sir. I’m not sure the weapons dealer there was being entirely honest with us.”  
  


*****

  
  
The whole of the trip there, James is tense and on edge. Robbie supposes that the lack of leads is bothering him. (Later, he will wonder if it wasn’t a touch of premonition; James will smile and say that he’s never been talented in that way.)  
  
Lewis parks the car a few blocks from the shop, soon as he sees an open parking space. He figures they’ll spend the rest of the trip in silence -- James being the way that he is -- but he surprises Robbie by speaking.  
  
“It’s amazing, if you think about it. Not all that long ago, human cities were inherently unsuitable for faeries -- all that cold iron. Nowadays, it isn’t used -- it isn’t missed at all. Plastics and alloys and all the wonders of technology. But there are people who sell it, who seek it out purposefully, who--”  
  
Lewis walks close to him, stumbles and brushes against him on purpose. James looks frightfully pale and he somehow hopes that the touch will steady him, ground him. “People do all sorts of horrible things to one another,” he says, “you know that. We see it every day.”  
  
James looks straight at him and doesn’t say anything. After a long minute spent walking in silence -- they are almost on the doorstep of the weapons shop -- he says, “I can’t explain it to you, but it _is_ different. Cold iron is … it’s different.”  
  
(Robbie will understand, later, that a poison directed to, and only hurting, the fae, is indeed different. Horribly human and brutal and terrifying to the fae.)  
  
There’s a lad leaning in the doorway, hands in his pockets and a sneer on his face.  
  
“Different?” he asks. “Different, the way that faeries stealing human babies is _different_ \-- somehow justified? Somehow morally right?”  
  
James freezes.  
  
Robbie takes a step forward. “Now, you know that simply isn’t true--”  
  
“They bewitch us,” the lad says. “They steal our children, steal us, ensorcel us. They have powers--” he stops and looks at James.  
  
“I know what you are,” he says. (Robbie doesn’t know -- he should know -- he should have known all this time.)  
  
“Where were you last night?” James asks in a low tight voice.  
  
He doesn’t answer, but stays there slouched in the doorway. He takes his hands out of his pockets, yawns ostentatiously, and then folds them behind his back. “Don’t reckon that I need to tell you anything,” he says.  
  
James takes a step forward. “ _Where were you?_ ”  
  
The lad laughs in his face, then whips his arm out from behind his back -- he’s holding a metal crossbar, an ugly dark thing that arcs through the air.  
  
“What’s it to you? What’s it to you if I killed one stupid little fairy? The world’s a better place … the world’s a better place without her...”  
  
Cold iron hits James, and suddenly -- Robbie knows. He should’ve known. He should’ve known all along, and here’s James on the floor for it, gasping with pain. Robbie doesn’t know how to help him, doesn’t know how to touch him without hurting him more, doesn’t know how to save him -- and all of this is happening because Robbie was an idiot who didn’t know better, who didn’t get between him and the crowbar.  
  


*****

  
  
Nothing Robbie can think of, no should-have-known or should-have-said, nothing can change this, the blood welling up like quicksilver under his fingers. Shock, poison to the system, systemic -- Robbie tries frantically to remember anything he’s ever heard about cold iron poisoning. “James--”  
  
The lad was too quick for them, too quick for the both of them -- which Robbie now realizes should’ve been impossible, the evidence of what James is unmistakable in front of him. Faerie. Faerie-fast, he should’ve been.  
  
James blinks up at him, solemn and sure. There’s a bubble of blood at the corner of his mouth, and Robbie reaches with one rough thumb to brush it away. Lumpish and mortal, that’s him, profaning the ethereal and beautiful--  
  
“Stop it,” James says. His heartbeat is slowing under Robbie’s hands. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. It’s been…”  
  
He trails off, seems to lose his train of thought. Robbie bends closer to hear him better.  
  
“Go after him,” James says. “For Anastasia -- for her parents. Catch him.”  
  
Robbie blinks, finding it suddenly hard to see James. “As if you think I’d leave you.”  
  
This close to James, Robbie can smell lavender, faintly, under the metallic overlay of blood. His hands are pressed to James’s chest, he can feel the man’s heart beating. It falters, faint.  
  
“Sir,” he says. “It’s been … an honour.”  
  
Robbie swallows, hard enough to hurt.  
  
Eyes closed, he leans further forward until his forehead is resting against James’s, until he’s close enough to breathe in his ear, “Stay, James. I won’t leave you,” and brush a kiss across his mouth.  
  
It is the faintest brush of dry lips -- a liberty Robbie would’ve never dared to take, under normal circumstances, but he reckons that this is as far outside of normal as you can get. James shudders and jerks under his hands. Robbie keeps his eyes screwed shut.  
  
This is it, he thinks. He can’t bear to watch. James is warm under his hands, still. They’ll have to pull him away.  
  
Another shudder, a ragged breath. James moves restlessly. His hands come up to catch Robbie’s. “ _Look at me._ ”  
  
His hands brush over Robbie’s face, lingering. “I never dared to imagine this,” he says, his voice stronger, but it is the tone of revenant wonder in his voice that makes Robbie open his eyes.  
  
“James?”  
  
“Robbie.” His voice turns rich, deep, more a caress than anything else. (Robbie knows, suddenly, how Faeries manage to bewitch mortals with their voices -- he knows and doesn’t care. He’ll take this over reality.)  
  
“No, no, this is real. You’ve saved me.”  
  
James pulls him close for another kiss, this one just as soft and tentative as the first. “Thank you” James says, his breath as light as gossamer-wings brushed over Robbie’s skin, light and rising like a prayer. “Thank you.”  
  


*****

  
  
In the aftermath, when it’s all been done and dusted -- one Edgar Rutherson handcuffed and in police custody, one James Hathaway bloodstained and a bit worse for wear, but _there_ under the protective arm Robbie’s slung around his shoulder -- Robbie shoots a sidelong glance at his sergeant, his James.  
  
“Yours or mine?” he asks. They have things to talk about, and a pub’s not the place, that much is for sure.  
  
“Mine, if it’s all right by you,” James says easily.  
  
Robbie should have seen -- should have _known_ a lot sooner -- if nothing else, he should’ve thought it a bit bloody suspicious that they always went to a pub or his place, never to James’s.  
  
“Am I going to lose hours on end once I cross the threshold, then?”  
  
James stares at him for a minute and then tilts his head back, laughs until it hurts and he’s holding his chest.  
  
“I’ll try to keep that from happening,” he says solemnly.  
  
“All right, then,” Robbie says. “Lead on.”  
  
It’s not so much a case of James leading -- Robbie’s not willing to let go of him -- but they separate for long enough to get into the car, James folding his long limbs into the driver’s seat.  
  
“Are you sure you ought to--”  
  
“I’m fine,” he says easily, brushing his knuckles across the back of Robbie’s hand before going to grasp the steering wheel. “Good as new. Perfect. Saved by love’s true kiss.”  
  
“That’s just--”  
  
“The only known remedy for cold iron poisoning,” James says, and his voice is serious this time. “So. We can talk about it, or not, as you like. But I’ll know, always. I thought that you should know that.”  
  
Robbie can feel his nerves still buzzing with the relief that James is with him and safe, that they’ve miraculously come through it unscathed. He isn’t sure what he thinks beyond that. It’s -- it’s too much. “All right,” he says, slowly. “I--”  
  
“You don’t have to say anything now. We have _world enough and time,_ as the poet would say.”  
  
Past his nerves buzzing with the adrenaline fall-out, Robbie’s head is buzzing with questions. (One at a time. James isn’t going anywhere -- James isn’t going anywhere, he reminds himself.) “Did you know him?”  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
“The poet. Did you know him?”  
  
“Andrew Marvell? In the 1600s?” James blinks, and then laughs. “Is that your way of asking if I really am immortal? No, I didn’t know him, and no, I’m not -- just have the trick of popping into Faerie, where time runs differently, if I so choose. I can…”  
  
He hesitates, here, and his fingers tighten a little on the steering wheel. He makes a careful right turn, signalling properly, and then inclines his head towards Robbie. “It’s open to … friends and family, as well, as it were. The notion of parting as sweet sorrow is not one that the fae are concerned with.”  
  
The future looms before him, suddenly, and Robbie doesn’t know what to think. He is human -- earth, clay, dross -- compared to James’s quicksilver, gold, faerie-spun and fine. “I--”  
  
“Nothing to think about now,” James says. “I’m not expecting -- that is, this doesn’t have to be anything. I just … want to give you all the information. In case you were interested. I … I will admit that I, I want a great deal. But I won’t pressure you, or anything. It’s entirely up to you.”  
  
“You haven’t exactly been forthcoming about any of this before.”  
  
“I know.” James runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it until it stands on end. They are at the end of his road, now, and he parks the car carefully before turning to face Lewis. “I didn’t -- at first, I didn’t know what sort of man you were. There are people -- well, as we’ve seen today. I usually …. don’t tell people that I’m fey until I’m quite close to them. Then at some point, when I knew you, it seemed too hard to bring up. And I knew--”  
  
He flushes faintly, the tips of his ears turning red. “I knew I liked you,” he says. “I didn’t want -- couldn’t stand it -- if I accidentally drove you away. I knew you wouldn’t mind that I wasn’t, wasn’t exactly human, but the secret -- having kept it for so long -- I thought you might have minded that. It got harder and harder to tell you, and--” He shrugs.  
  
“I should’ve known,” Robbie says. “Guessed about your band-mates, didn’t I? All the signs were there.”  
  
“You’ve seen me by daylight, remember? I nearly laughed when you said that--”  
  
Robbie isn’t sure that he wants to revisit his less-than-glorious moments. He should have known, and this is just rubbing it in. “Aye well, I’ve also seen you get drunk on tonic water … that should’ve been a clue.”  
  
“All that carbonation,” James says, nodding solemnly. “It’s very intoxicating.”  
  
He hesitates, his hand on the car door, then hops out and swoops around to the other side faster than Robbie can blink, and is standing there and holding the door open for him. “Wow.”  
  
James closes the door with a quiet click and then leans against it. “It’s not -- not exactly in Faerie, my flat. And it’s not exactly in the human world, either. It’s -- in between. You don’t have to come up, if you don’t want to … you won’t lose any time, inside, but you might find it … strange. I’d -- after hiding it from you for so long -- I want to show it to you. But -- it’s up to you. It’s your choice.”  
  
His nerves are still buzzing, but they’ve settled considerably during the car ride and their conversation, and Robbie’s heart -- well, his heart is singing. (Love’s true kiss. He should’ve bloody known.) He should’ve known that this could happen, between him and James -- now that it has, he should believe it.  
  
“Don’t be daft,” he says. “Of course I want to see it.”  
  
Their hands brush as they walk up the stairs, and neither of them makes any move to pull away.  
  
(He’ll remember this moment, later, keep the memory and cherish it.)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Lewis FrightFest, based on kat_lair’s prompt: “Hathaway is fey. Run with it :D”


End file.
